Common sense for an uncommon world.

Tag Archives: students

I opened the paper today and I was amazed at what I read. It just seemed all so familiar.

A city, reeling from mayoral scandals and political impropriety, is concerned about how it’s going to retain its youth.

A city, with plenty of aging, empty industrial land within its core, finds growth success in the suburbs. While “A louer” signs abound in depressed, historically poorer areas of the traditional core, new megaplexes and commercial centres are sprouting up to support the burgeoning suburban communities.

In the same publication, a youth advocate states that citizens must be involved in each and every decision the government makes, and suggests that what the city really needs more of is candidates under the age of 30.

I admire teachers. I think they have one of the toughest, most-thankless jobs in the world. I think that most of them are good people, trying to do their best while their hands are tied in red tape.

I also know that if teachers decide to withhold extracurricular services to students as part of their protest of Tuesday’s provincial legislative manoeuvers, then they’ll lose any and all sympathy and support that they might have received from me — and, likely, from many other parents just like me.

The Catholic school system’s decision to get all up in arms over the naming of a mandated club may finally cause people from all walks of life to wonder why (in the name of God) are we still funding Catholic schools at all?

Laurel Broten, the Ontario Minister of Education, has said that all publicly funded schools in Ontario must create clubs that specifically target the bullying of gay, bisexual, and transgender students. Oh, and students have to take the lead in the groups – including having the power to name them. Continue reading →

The world’s greatest city just got one heck of a black eye thanks to a bunch of allegedly smart kids parading around in blackface for the world to see.

The idea that a bunch of white kids would engage in this sort of activity in the first place is inane; the fact that they didn’t think that it would end up on YouTube for the world to see? That’s just mind-numbingly stupid. Continue reading →

In trying to hush the teachers of St. Thomas Aquinas, the London District Catholic School Board may have inadvertently drawing much-needed attention to a long-running story.

Administrators across the city should be quaking in their boots as it’s not just at the Catholic high school where the student inmates are running the asylum. And it’s time for school boards to support their front-line workers – the teachers who are increasingly fighting a battle against their students with their hands bound by administrative lunacy. Continue reading →

Today is National Grammar Day and while there appears to be increasingly little to celebrate if you survey the linguistic landscape, perhaps it’s time to reassess where the actual blame lies.

We all know about the challenges to the language that are our youth. Schools have increasingly abdicated their obligation to teach, instead settling for the lowered bar that is comprehension. Text and on-line messaging have also conspired to diminish the language as the next generation’s current form of communication is actively impeding their ability to express themselves.